it was a cold afternoon on May 3rdd 1999 in garon village in lak's balic sector when 37-year-old Tashi namil out looking for his missing Yak saw something suspicious camouflaged Pakistani soldiers building bunkers in his village without further Ado Tashi namil rushed to a nearby Indian army post to tell them what he saw by this time Indian Army headquarters in Delhi had also started receiving reports of unusual ual activity in the kill and balic sectors of Jammu and Kashmir then Army Chief General VP Malik was on a visit to Poland upon receiving these intelligence reports he
asked his staff in India to step up patrolling operations by the time he returned home it had become evident that the intrusion was much bigger and occupied a much larger sede than the usual crossb terrorist activities carried out by Pakistani mujahidin for a start these men were much more disciplined and much better trained than mujahidin usually are at occupying territory and keeping it the intensity of their mortar and artillery fire gave the game away the Pakistan Army's signature was all over the invasion at ggill much later the Indian army would discover that the Pakistani soldiers
clad in civilian clothes actually belonged to its northern light infantry battalion on May 24th General VP Malik briefed the cabinet Committee of security Affairs by May 26th India had launched operation Vijay to flush out the foreign infiltrators India was at war with Pakistan military and diplomatic jargon however would ensure that The Invasion at kill would never be called a war but simply a limited conflict [Music] so how did the Pakistan Army manage to pull off such a large operation and how did the plora of Indian agencies explain this massive intelligence failure know when there are
two heads of States Prime Ministers of Pakistan and prime minister of India uh they are talking to each other and they are signing an agreement I think that has to be taken very very seriously the problem was in Pakistan uh the Pakistan Army uh did not take their own prime minister into confidence and that is how then we were surprised when the action took place but um uh I I don't think that we misunderstood Pakistan I mean to be honest we didn't know exactly what was happening all we had said was that something unusual is
going on there and we need to take note of it and and um you know it's one of those things it's one of those areas that I was asked this question by the uh that how come we ignored this and my answer then and my answer today would be the same that you know if the pakistanis were to come across that was an area we least expected them to come from because it is the most difficult way of coming into Kashmir but um it happened and frankly everybody was taken una aw certainly the Pakistani soldiers
had used some smart deception techniques to outwit the Indian army apart from dressing in shalvar kamis all communication was carried out in the languages of Pakistan occupied Kashmir so as to prevent kashmiris and lakis from understanding what they were saying only four army officers including musharaf knew about this plan operation kipa as it was called to invade Jammu and Kashmir operation kipa intended to use the peak winter months to occupy the Kil dasas and balic sectors the pakistanis knew the Indian army would pull back as they did every winter leaving vast suedes of territory unprotected
the Pakistani generals believed the surprise Invasion would allow their soldiers to capture India's National Highway 1A the only link between India and ladak thereby cutting it off from the rest of the country Pakistan's Northern Light infantry a regiment based in Pakistan occupied Kashmir with deep knowledge of the area's mountainous terrain was given the charge to lead the operation the big question meanwhile was whether prime minister Navas Sharif still glowing from his political success in getting prime minister atel bihari vaj to come to lore on his peace bus only three months before in February 1999 was
aware of the mushara plan or not Caril uh intrusion did catch us by surprise uh for the simple reason that uh Naas Sharif was uh oozing Goodwill um but we had our suspicions because of this sort of rhetoric but we didn't as as far as I can aware was aware anticipate it would be such a major intrusion across the line of control um initially the pakistanis took the took the position uh to with the International Community that uh they had not crossed the line of control it was not clear where it was which he top
it lay on uh to which we uh uh provided them with the maps when the signed bit by the two senior Army officials in 1972 of India and Pakistan which spelled out precisely where the line of control lay so there was that whole argument which they said that it was not very clear it could have been one Hilltop or another we just demolished it and in fact um I discussed it with Braes Mishra and it was provided to every major power and uh very frankly I took the view that uh the uh we should uh
you know play it cool tell the whole world but with the confidence to the world that we're going to Prevail uh in the meantime PM had called a meeting where I was called in which was briefed by the service Chiefs and general Malik made it very clear to him that he would require time he would not give a timeline but his boys would ensure that uh we threw out the pakistanis from wherever they were positioned on our side of the line of control over six weeks in late May June and early July 1999 Indian soldiers
fought back to defeat the Pakistani army on the heights of kill the official death toll of soldiers and officers who laid down their lives in defense of the motherland was 553 private TV stations brought the war into the living rooms of the entire country making it the first media War ever to be fought in the Indian subcontinent on May 31 prime minister atal bihari vaj a master of understatement declared that a warlike situation had developed in Kill over the next 10 days the situation deteriorated rapidly on June 10th Pakistan returned the mutilated bodies of sick
soldiers and raging India Deli demanded that Pakistan follow the Norms of civil ized Nations as well as the Vienna and Geneva conventions guaranteeing respect for the dead especially in war and warlike situations by the middle of June as tensions between the two nuclear neighbors escalated it was inevitable that the US the world's biggest power at the time would get involved vaj under pressure from his own Army to enlarge the perimeter of the conflict and inflict pain upon Pakistan held his nerve he realized that at all times India had to appear to be the responsible nation
which responsibly commanded a nuclear Arsenal while Pakistan's generals needed to be exposed for their irresponsible Behavior Uh government as well as the armed forces were very quick to respond and I think there was a very coherent and a very well calculated diplomatic as well as military and political response which I think uh shifted the advantage of uh of the initial Advantage which Pakistan had and moved it the in the direction I think uh uh of India we were able to uh at very very high cost particularly in terms of uh the loss of our uh
of our uh soldiers it actually perhaps almost defined it brought about a new definition of heroism actually uh Caril from that point of view was a very costly war in terms term of human lives but it also showed the extent to which the Indian soldier the Indian state was willing to undertake sacrifice for the for the cause of uh our National Defense and uh the decision taken also not to cross the line of control contributed towards this high cost but I think ultimately it was politically at that time the right decision and it helped to
raise the stature of India as well as give it a diplomatic uh Advantage which I think we were able to use eventually with countries including with major countries like the United States and China a strategic decision was taken by uh Indian uh think tank during the garal crisis that they were not going to in fact there were several elements to it but key elements are one that they were not going to accept ceasefire and negotiations unless the pakistanis had cleared out of what they had occupied because that was Pakistan's strategy that get to a ceasefire
and then keep negotiating forever then what you've taken is yours but the decision was that no matter what the costs even if they were initial setbacks India will fight on until the pakistanis cleared out the second was that under no circumstances will this be escalated beyond the line of control in Kashmir and essentially in the same car Guild region where incursions had taken place so even within the even across the looc in other areas from the Indian side there was no escalation third that even to carry out the operations to evi the Pak evict the
pakistanis in KRA region Kil Ras balic region India will not cross the looc and go on the other side now that was a very clever strategic and and I would say political decision because this repeated harping on the L loc loc was also aimed at and it it is not something that happens coincidentally that was the plan it was aimed at establishing the legitimacy of the loc as the de facto border by the middle of June 1999 as Indian soldiers clawed back inch by inch Indian Territory that had been lost in a surprise Invasion vaj
called Upon Us President Bill Clinton and the rest of the international Community to put the finger of blame on Pakistan if Pakistan didn't order its soldiers to walk back across the line of control vaj said India would have to pursue its own course of action a few days later US President Clinton told Navas Sharif to order the Pakistan Army to withdraw from kgill and go back across the line of control by June 29th the Indian army had recaptured two important posts near tiger Hill a hugely important feature that dominated the landscape by July 4th it
had captured tiger Hill this was seen as a de facto victory for India uh I recall on Independence Us Independence Day when Naas took off from America Asma jangar their Loca un Ambassador asked me she was then the newspaper editor as how I saw the visit I said I saw it told her I said Asma this is the beginning of the end game of your Carill misadventure and she printed that the next morning in the news is uh uh end of end games say Indian enoy 10 days later India declared operation VI to be a
success by July 26 1999 every Pakistani Soldier had been evicted from Indian Territory the conflict between the two nuclear Neighbors had finally come to an end [Music]
